This paper discusses the rising profile of natural gas in global energy, factors constraining its further development, the gas contracting process, and the absence of a global market, which is analyzed in the context of the economic rent in the gas price and the opaque nature of gas contracts. A...

Starting in 2005, nontax revenue in Georgia is expected to rise significantly, in the form of transit fees for oil transported through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Oil Pipeline. Transit fees for gas transported through the South Caucasus Pipeline are expected to start in 2007. This paper discusses...

We present evidence on one facet of energy security in OECD economies - the extent of diversification in sources of oil and natural gas supplies. Viewed from the perspective of the energy-importing countries as a whole, there has not been much change in diversification in oil supplies over the...

How should resource-rich economies handle the balance of payments adjustment required after commodity price declines? This paper addresses the question theoretically by developing a simple two-period multi-sector model based on Nakatani (2016) to compare different exchange rate policies, and...

Using a sample of 97 countries spanning the period 1980?2008, we estimate that financial crises have a large negative impact on unemployment in the short term, but that this effect rapidly disappears in the medium term in countries with flexible labor market institutions, whereas the impact of...

This paper examines the empirical link between fiscal policy and the current account focusing on microstates defined as countries with a population of less than 2 million between 1970 and 2009. The paper employs panel regression and panel vector autoregression (VAR) on 155 countries of which 42...